Being able to run a successful hotel can be challenging as multiple factors can affect your business. Some we can anticipate, like seasonality, and others might be harder to prepare for. Below are our top 10 tips on how we think you can effectively increase your bookings.

1. Understand your guests and who they are

Who are your guests and why are they staying with you? Are they travelling on business or leisure?

When you understand who your guests are you will have incredibly powerful data and be able to plan your marketing and sales activities around this.

2. Speed up Your Hotel Website

If you web site is slow you will lose the booking to a competitor or OTA. Resulting in commission payments. Research shows that up to 75% of people will leave for a competitor’s site to avoid dealing with delays.

A slow, cumbersome web site will also result in your guests leaving your site and going on to a much quicker more efficient site such as bookings.com

3.Make sure your on-site team are trained to convert bookings over the phone

This is vital – they need to build rapport, ask the right questions, uncover needs, sell to those needs, overcome objection and convert the booking.

4. Ensure your images show off your property

Your hotel gallery page is where potential guests come to find out more about you. It helps them decide if you are the right hotel for them, by showing off your personality and your (hopefully!) polished rooms.

5. Keep your site as simple as possible

According to a Google study in 2012, visually complex websites are seen as less effective and less aesthetically appealing.

This is why simplifying your design and navigation is essential. Along with making your site faster, it will help guests consume information quicker and leads to cognitive ease, beefing up your persuasive power.

6. Bring guests’ emotions into play with visual stories

Research shows that:

• 67% of consumers consider clear, detailed images to be very important and carry even more weight than the product information and customer ratings (MDG Advertising)

• Travelers are 150% more engaged with listings that have more than 20 photos than with properties that have only a few photos (TripAdvisor, 2013)

Images pack a huge emotional punch and can help turn casual visitors into guests. But that’s only if you’re using them correctly.

7.Make sure you are mobile ready

With over a quarter of the online travel market’s money coming through mobile, making your website responsive or adaptive for mobile isn’t a choice anymore. If you want to get more bookings, it’s a must.

Make sure your mobile site is not just a reduced version of your main website as this will just try and fit too many elements onto the screen.

8. Have a compelling call-to-action

For the most part, focus in a marketing campaign is on email campaigns, ad designs, copy and images. Those are all important, but the importance of the call to action on your landing page or in your ad can get overlooked in the noise.

Your CTA represents the tipping point between a bounce and a conversion. If you want people to click and convert, you need to have a call-to-action that reels them in.

9. Remember the basics of features and benefits

Whether you are talking about your website or call you need to make sure your guest understands the benefit to them as opposed to seeing a list of features.

Instead of listing your hotel’s features like this:

• A great spa

• A safe and fun play area

• A spacious conference room

Try explaining how these features translate into benefits for your potential guests and say:

• We have a health spa and gym. That means you can let your hair down and unwind after a busy day.

• We have a kids’ play area, so you can indulge in quality time with your significant other.

• We have a spacious conference room, so you can hold meetings comfortably and communicate more effectively by using our boards and projectors.

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10. Take advantage of retargeting

Research shows that over 70% of travel website users will abandon their bookings.

One way for hoteliers to combat this is to use retargeting to reach potential guests who’ve “slipped through the cracks”. Try retargeting and give yourself a second chance to win over guests.

If you found these points helpful, feel free to get in contact with our dedicated Vroom staff so we can work with you to create the best training course suited for you and your team.

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